Maintenance - and what happens when???

itladyee

Wishful thinking at this point as I'm a long way from maintenance but I have some concerns. Maybe once I get there, they will all go away! ETA: November 2022

I've read the maintenance board and it seems that what everyone is doing make sense but...

Today I range from 1000 to 1200 calories a day. As long as I'm there - I lose. The first week was awesome but I knew that wouldn't last. So daily, within this calorie range, I'm losing .2 to .5 lbs a day, which is GREAT!

Then there's the human moments where something else slips into my day and my ending calorie count is closer to 1500. According to charts and graphs and google, my maintenance calories should be in the 1600 neighborhood.

So hitting a day or two (not consecutive) at 1500, I would expect to maintain my last weight and not gain. I have gained every time! Usually 1.5 to 2 lbs!!!!! 🤦‍♀️

The good news is that number scares me back to my plan! The bad news, it brings concerns for when I do get to maintenance. I really want to lose this weight once and for all and don't want it creeping back.

Salt comes to mind but with all the water I consume and get rid of (to put it nicely), I wouldn't expect this to be the case.

Thoughts?

sijomial

The beauty of calorie counting is that you absolutely know that you didn't gain 1.5 to 2 lbs (with or without exclamation marks!!!!!!) of FAT without eating 5,250 to 7,000 calories over maintenance.
Sorry I don't find that gain remarkable. 4lbs for a Chinese meal or 3lbs after a particularly hard bike ride (despite a massive calorie deficit) are normal for me.

With keeping in mind you want to lose fat does it actually matter that you showed a temporary blip upwards in weight? (Extra food in your gut and water weight.)

You seem far too invested in your daily weight number if you don't mind me saying. Each of those data points has virtually no significance on its own. It's your trend over weeks and months that matter.

Eating too little and expecting to see weight loss every day are not indicators of a sustainable plan and mindset. Don't make this process so hard you find it hateful, stressful and fail.

BTW - not really seeing what are your particular maintenance concerns? Is it that weight fluctuates? Because if it is then that is normal, natural and unavoidable when maintaining. You need to massively elongate your timescales and perspectives and now would be a good time to start.

itladyee

My concern is if I gained 1.5 to 2 pounds by 1 day of a 500 overage (of my losing target), if I ate 1500 to 1700 calories daily during maintenance, that I would continue to gain.

Your comment however is valid and helps a lot with my thinking and/or concerns:

"The beauty of calorie counting is that you absolutely know that you didn't gain 1.5 to 2 lbs (with or without exclamation marks!!!!!!) of FAT without eating 5,250 to 7,000 calories over maintenance"

Thank you

sijomial

A rough rule of thumb might help.....

Water related weight changes quickly.
Fat changes slowly.
Muscle changes even slower.

By the time you get to November you will have your calories pretty well dialled in and your confidence in the process will be higher.

The physics of storing/losing fat don't change at maintenance.
The vagaries of weight fluctuations don't change at maintenance either but might actually become more obvious without being masked by a downward trend. A certain sang froid over the number a simple weighing device tells you really does help, don't give that number more power than it deserves.

e.g. On Sunday my maintenance calories were about 4,600cals and I only ate about 3,000 cals. Monday morning up three pounds despite the deficit.
Overate on Monday to even things up (and I was hungry!), Tuesday morning I'm down a couple of pounds despite the surplus.
This morning I'm back to where I started out Sunday morning. That's the reality of maintenance, a wave and not a flat line.

Cheesy567

Part of the beauty of daily weighing is that you get to learn your body’s fluctuations and responses to things. They aren’t always immediate. When I have an injury, it can take a week or two for the few pounds of gain and small plateau to settle out and “woosh” away. A salty meal might take a couple days to settle out. A large meal later in the evening will cause a higher morning weight. A hot day might cause a low weight from sweating, or a high weight because who knows. I haven’t figured that one out, but my body retains water in heat even if I’m feeling dehydrated.

There are apps that can help to find the overall trend for you, Libra and Happy Scale are two of the most commonly used. They give you a rolling average weight from the daily data you enter, so any one day doesn’t skew your progress line.

And yes, weightloss is not linear. There will be days where the scale goes up. Even when you are eating at your full deficit. You didn’t mention your height, but 1,000 calories is very low unless you are very short, and shouldn’t be sustained unless you are under close care of a medical team who recommends that very low calorie diet. It can cause heart problems, electrolyte problems, kidney problems… not a healthy way to lose weight for most of us. You’ll be better off lifelong slowing your pace of weightloss to 0.5-1 pound per week and take a less of a deficit. Keep it safe. Check with your doctor if you have questions about it.

As for maintenance, it’s a good skill to start practicing anytime. I started my weightloss with maintenance first, at my highest weight. Once I had figured that out, I took a deficit. I go into maintenance every fall- winter and as I need to for a couple weeks or a month when medical issues arise or life becomes stressful. This approach has stopped the weightloss-regain cycles I used to have. Each time I go into maintenance, I gain a bit of weight, 2-5 pounds, then evens out. If you ever wonder, you can eat at your “maintenance calories” for a 2-4 week period and see if your weight trend stays the same, increases, or decreases— then you know if it is in fact your true maintenance calories as opposed to your theoretical maintenance calories.

itladyee

sijomial wrote: »

A rough rule of thumb might help.....

Water related weight changes quickly.
Fat changes slowly.
Muscle changes even slower.

By the time you get to November you will have your calories pretty well dialled in and your confidence in the process will be higher.

The physics of storing/losing fat don't change at maintenance.
The vagaries of weight fluctuations don't change at maintenance either but might actually become more obvious without being masked by a downward trend. A certain sang froid over the number a simple weighing device tells you really does help, don't give that number more power than it deserves.

e.g. On Sunday my maintenance calories were about 4,600cals and I only ate about 3,000 cals. Monday morning up three pounds despite the deficit.
Overate on Monday to even things up (and I was hungry!), Tuesday morning I'm down a couple of pounds despite the surplus.
This morning I'm back to where I started out Sunday morning. That's the reality of maintenance, a wave and not a flat line.

Awesome and really great information. This really does help!

AnnPT77

itladyee wrote: »

My concern is if I gained 1.5 to 2 pounds by 1 day of a 500 overage (of my losing target), if I ate 1500 to 1700 calories daily during maintenance, that I would continue to gain.

Your comment however is valid and helps a lot with my thinking and/or concerns:

"The beauty of calorie counting is that you absolutely know that you didn't gain 1.5 to 2 lbs (with or without exclamation marks!!!!!!) of FAT without eating 5,250 to 7,000 calories over maintenance"

Thank you

His point is that it's not fat gain of 1.5 to 2 pounds. It can't be. You have to eat approximately 3500 calories above maintenance calories to gain one pound of fat. If you eat 500 calories for one day, above an amount of calories that's been causing you to lose 0.2-0.5 pounds per day, and haven't done hugely, dramatically less activity . . . the 1.5 to 2 pounds that shows up on the scale the very next day can't possibly be fat. Not. Possible.

That's just math and physics.

If you've averaged around 0.35 pounds of fat loss daily (0.35 is the average of 0.2 and 0.5), that implies that you've been eating at approximately 1225 calories per day (0.35 x 3500) below your maintenance calories on average. Eat 500 more calories than that, you've still got a calorie deficit of around 725 calories, i.e., fat loss is happening. If it's more like 0.2 pounds per day fat loss on average, your calorie deficit is around 700 per day below maintenance. If it's more like 0.5 per day on average, 1750 below maintenance. Eating 500 calories more per day doesn't produce a calorie surplus above maintenance, in that scenario.

Why does the scale go up, then? More food in your system, on its way to becoming waste. An apple in my hand, cored, can weigh about 100 grams. If I eat that apple, that's 100 grams in my stomach, later intestines, etc., until it becomes waste (poo). The 100 gram apple has 52 calories. The most body fat 52 calories can ever be is 0.015 pounds of fat, and it won't be fat at all unless I'm in a calorie surplus.

On top of the weight of the apple or other food (the part which will become waste), eating more food requires our bodies to hold onto a little more of the water we drink in order to process that additional food, and as part of releasing the nutrients from it for our bodies to use. That retained water also has weight.

If a person doesn't change their eating or activity, sudden multi-pound overnight jumps on the scale are not changes in body fat. They're changes in water retention, and in food waste that hasn't been sent to the toilet yet. That's just how healthy bodies behave, part of how they stay healthy.

When you go to maintenance calories, or just closer to maintenance in a several-hundred-calories sudden increase, it's normal to see that couple pounds of scale jump. It doesn't keep increasing and increasing. If you eat consistently at that level, keep up the same activities, it will level off, maybe even drop a bit again. It may roller-coaster up and down for a week or two, no big deal. It'll settle down.

There's literally no reason to let this stress you out, because it isn't fat regain.

If you can't keep yourself from stressing out about it, I'd suggest that as you get close to goal, like the last 5 pounds or so, you start adding small increments of calories, like 50 or 100 calories per day, and do that once a week. That will still affect water/waste weight, but the effect will be quite small, maybe not very visible on the scale. Keep doing that gradually, over a period of weeks, you'll lose slower and slower, and eventually your weight will stabilize.

Even if you accidentally go too far up in calories, eating 100 calories daily over your true maintenance calories will only add a pound of body fat after about 35 days - more than a month. That's unlikely to happen, but if it does, you know how to lose a pound, right?

No one can stay at weight loss calories forever, especially if the weight loss is going as fast as yours has been. A person would just keep losing and losing, getting more fatigued and less healthy. That's a really, really bad idea.

Frankly, if you've been losing (on average) up to half a pound a day for a long time, that's worrisome in itself, unless you're still well over 300 pounds . . . and maybe even then.

You can do this. It's important to understand that scale weight isn't just fat, it's water, food, bones, muscles, and a few pounds of gut microbes that aren't even genetically "us", but that we need to survive. The water and food weight can change fast, literally moment to moment, if we eat/drink/sweat/urinate/defecate, in fact. Fat changes - in a healthy person - are slower, happen gradually over days to weeks or even months. Changes in muscle or bone - in that same healthy person - are even slower than that, many months to years.

Underscoring: Fast scale changes, without a dramatic change in eating or activity, are water and food waste. It's not about body fat.

itladyee

Cheesy567 wrote: »

Part of the beauty of daily weighing is that you get to learn your body’s fluctuations and responses to things. They aren’t always immediate. When I have an injury, it can take a week or two for the few pounds of gain and small plateau to settle out and “woosh” away. A salty meal might take a couple days to settle out. A large meal later in the evening will cause a higher morning weight. A hot day might cause a low weight from sweating, or a high weight because who knows. I haven’t figured that one out, but my body retains water in heat even if I’m feeling dehydrated.

There are apps that can help to find the overall trend for you, Libra and Happy Scale are two of the most commonly used. They give you a rolling average weight from the daily data you enter, so any one day doesn’t skew your progress line.

And yes, weightloss is not linear. There will be days where the scale goes up. Even when you are eating at your full deficit. You didn’t mention your height, but 1,000 calories is very low unless you are very short, and shouldn’t be sustained unless you are under close care of a medical team who recommends that very low calorie diet. It can cause heart problems, electrolyte problems, kidney problems… not a healthy way to lose weight for most of us. You’ll be better off lifelong slowing your pace of weightloss to 0.5-1 pound per week and take a less of a deficit. Keep it safe. Check with your doctor if you have questions about it.

As for maintenance, it’s a good skill to start practicing anytime. I started my weightloss with maintenance first, at my highest weight. Once I had figured that out, I took a deficit. I go into maintenance every fall- winter and as I need to for a couple weeks or a month when medical issues arise or life becomes stressful. This approach has stopped the weightloss-regain cycles I used to have. Each time I go into maintenance, I gain a bit of weight, 2-5 pounds, then evens out. If you ever wonder, you can eat at your “maintenance calories” for a 2-4 week period and see if your weight trend stays the same, increases, or decreases— then you know if it is in fact your true maintenance calories as opposed to your theoretical maintenance calories.

Also helpful. I like weighing daily but I just have to get the right mindset about it and realize it really means nothing.

I am 5'4''. I will message my doctor just to confirm (good idea). I know that weight loss is not linear but I guess a good take away is neither is maintenance.

Thank you for the feedback

itladyee

AnnPT77 wrote: »

itladyee wrote: »

My concern is if I gained 1.5 to 2 pounds by 1 day of a 500 overage (of my losing target), if I ate 1500 to 1700 calories daily during maintenance, that I would continue to gain.

Your comment however is valid and helps a lot with my thinking and/or concerns:

"The beauty of calorie counting is that you absolutely know that you didn't gain 1.5 to 2 lbs (with or without exclamation marks!!!!!!) of FAT without eating 5,250 to 7,000 calories over maintenance"

Thank you

His point is that it's not fat gain of 1.5 to 2 pounds. It can't be. You have to eat approximately 3500 calories above maintenance calories to gain one pound of fat. If you eat 500 calories for one day, above an amount of calories that's been causing you to lose 0.2-0.5 pounds per day, and haven't done hugely, dramatically less activity . . . the 1.5 to 2 pounds that shows up on the scale the very next day can't possibly be fat. Not. Possible.

That's just math and physics.

If you've averaged around 0.35 pounds of fat loss daily (0.35 is the average of 0.2 and 0.5), that implies that you've been eating at approximately 1225 calories per day (0.35 x 3500) below your maintenance calories on average. Eat 500 more calories than that, you've still got a calorie deficit of around 725 calories, i.e., fat loss is happening. If it's more like 0.2 pounds per day fat loss on average, your calorie deficit is around 700 per day below maintenance. If it's more like 0.5 per day on average, 1750 below maintenance. Eating 500 calories more per day doesn't produce a calorie surplus above maintenance, in that scenario.

Why does the scale go up, then? More food in your system, on its way to becoming waste. An apple in my hand, cored, can weigh about 100 grams. If I eat that apple, that's 100 grams in my stomach, later intestines, etc., until it becomes waste (poo). The 100 gram apple has 52 calories. The most body fat 52 calories can ever be is 0.015 pounds of fat, and it won't be fat at all unless I'm in a calorie surplus.

On top of the weight of the apple or other food (the part which will become waste), eating more food requires our bodies to hold onto a little more of the water we drink in order to process that additional food, and as part of releasing the nutrients from it for our bodies to use. That retained water also has weight.

If a person doesn't change their eating or activity, sudden multi-pound overnight jumps on the scale are not changes in body fat. They're changes in water retention, and in food waste that hasn't been sent to the toilet yet. That's just how healthy bodies behave, part of how they stay healthy.

When you go to maintenance calories, or just closer to maintenance in a several-hundred-calories sudden increase, it's normal to see that couple pounds of scale jump. It doesn't keep increasing and increasing. If you eat consistently at that level, keep up the same activities, it will level off, maybe even drop a bit again. It may roller-coaster up and down for a week or two, no big deal. It'll settle down.

There's literally no reason to let this stress you out, because it isn't fat regain.

If you can't keep yourself from stressing out about it, I'd suggest that as you get close to goal, like the last 5 pounds or so, you start adding small increments of calories, like 50 or 100 calories per day, and do that once a week. That will still affect water/waste weight, but the effect will be quite small, maybe not very visible on the scale. Keep doing that gradually, over a period of weeks, you'll lose slower and slower, and eventually your weight will stabilize.

Even if you accidentally go too far up in calories, eating 100 calories daily over your true maintenance calories will only add a pound of body fat after about 35 days - more than a month. That's unlikely to happen, but if it does, you know how to lose a pound, right?

No one can stay at weight loss calories forever, especially if the weight loss is going as fast as yours has been. A person would just keep losing and losing, getting more fatigued and less healthy. That's a really, really bad idea.

Frankly, if you've been losing (on average) up to half a pound a day for a long time, that's worrisome in itself, unless you're still well over 300 pounds . . . and maybe even then.

You can do this. It's important to understand that scale weight isn't just fat, it's water, food, bones, muscles, and a few pounds of gut microbes that aren't even genetically "us", but that we need to survive. The water and food weight can change fast, literally moment to moment, if we eat/drink/sweat/urinate/defecate, in fact. Fat changes - in a healthy person - are slower, happen gradually over days to weeks or even months. Changes in muscle or bone - in that same healthy person - are even slower than that, many months to years.

Underscoring: Fast scale changes, without a dramatic change in eating or activity, are water and food waste. It's not about body fat.

More excellent information. Thanks for taking the time to "do the math". I've never really been officially in maintenance. I lose some, fall off the wagon, gain some and then just exist until I start again. It's been a while since I've focused as well as been serious about losing the weight and a lot of what you (and everyone else) has said is familiar, I just forgot it all. Thanks all for taking me back to school. I will copy and paste and add to my journal to reflect upon when I forget again ! All information is very encouraging!

cwolfman13

itladyee wrote: »

My concern is if I gained 1.5 to 2 pounds by 1 day of a 500 overage (of my losing target), if I ate 1500 to 1700 calories daily during maintenance, that I would continue to gain.

Your comment however is valid and helps a lot with my thinking and/or concerns:

"The beauty of calorie counting is that you absolutely know that you didn't gain 1.5 to 2 lbs (with or without exclamation marks!!!!!!) of FAT without eating 5,250 to 7,000 calories over maintenance"

Thank you

Biologically, you cannot gain 1.5 - 2 Lbs of fat in a day. Gaining and losing fat are slow processes. Also, the our biology strives for homeostasis and in short runs, the human body can utilize excess calories for other functions rather than storing them as fat...this is why gaining or losing fat requires consistent, long term calorie surpluses or shortages.

It is also normal to put on a few Lbs going to maintenance, noting that this isn't fat. When you cut calories, you also reduce the water necessary for digestion and metabolization which is why people usually lose a big chunk of water weight when they start a diet and reduce calories...when you increase calories, you increase water too. Not to mention, more food means more inherent waste in your system.

Beyond that, maintenance isn't a static weight. Maintenance is a range. In maintenance I average 182 Lbs, but that fluctuates day to day normally and naturally. I generally fluctuate anywhere from 0-3 Lbs day to day and more if I have traveled by air (airplane bloat), have had a really hard workout, consumed more sodium than normal, or consumed more carbohydrates than normal. But generally I'm anywhere from 179 - 185 day to day with an average weight of 182 which is what I consider my maintenance weight. The only time I make any changes is when I see as a trend over weeks that my average is steadily creeping up...then I know I'm consuming more calories and adjust accordingly. Also remember that the human body is comprised of roughly 55-65% water with average being around 60%...but that composition is always in flux, all on its own...most of your body is water.

Maintenance calories are also not a fixed thing because nobody consumes exactly the same number of calories or has the same output day to day...your maintenance level of calories is also going to be a range.

itladyee

cwolfman13 wrote: »

Biologically, you cannot gain 1.5 - 2 Lbs of fat in a day. Gaining and losing fat are slow processes. Also, the our biology strives for homeostasis and in short runs, the human body can utilize excess calories for other functions rather than storing them as fat...this is why gaining or losing fat requires consistent, long term calorie surpluses or shortages.

It is also normal to put on a few Lbs going to maintenance, noting that this isn't fat. When you cut calories, you also reduce the water necessary for digestion and metabolization which is why people usually lose a big chunk of water weight when they start a diet and reduce calories...when you increase calories, you increase water too. Not to mention, more food means more inherent waste in your system.

Beyond that, maintenance isn't a static weight. Maintenance is a range. In maintenance I average 182 Lbs, but that fluctuates day to day normally and naturally. I generally fluctuate anywhere from 0-3 Lbs day to day and more if I have traveled by air (airplane bloat), have had a really hard workout, consumed more sodium than normal, or consumed more carbohydrates than normal. But generally I'm anywhere from 179 - 185 day to day with an average weight of 182 which is what I consider my maintenance weight. The only time I make any changes is when I see as a trend over weeks that my average is steadily creeping up...then I know I'm consuming more calories and adjust accordingly. Also remember that the human body is comprised of roughly 55-65% water with average being around 60%...but that composition is always in flux, all on its own...most of your body is water.

Maintenance calories are also not a fixed thing because nobody consumes exactly the same number of calories or has the same output day to day...your maintenance level of calories is also going to be a range.

Thank you for your input!

emmamcgarity

I personally am a fan of taking planned diet breaks to eat at maintenance for a couple weeks before going back to a deficit. I typically plan to eat at maintenance during holidays etc as well.

itladyee

emmamcgarity wrote: »

I personally am a fan of taking planned diet breaks to eat at maintenance for a couple weeks before going back to a deficit. I typically plan to eat at maintenance during holidays etc as well.

Sounds like a great idea! Thanks.